“But what shall I tell the Receivers?” said John.
Sam had begun pacing up and down. She was growing more and more agitated. She had to get out of this mess, somehow, and get Wayne out too. These aliens were as nutty as the cultists she’d come to interview and they were surrounded by trigger-happy police, armed with God knows what by now. Anything could happen and, if she stayed here, she was more likely to be a victim of it than the intrepid reporter who tells the world the true, inside story.
What was going on here, she now saw, was an alien invasion of the Earth. Not one the aliens planned exactly but, now that they were here, one they intended to prosecute with hideous alien cunning. What better way to subjugate the planet than to convert us all to their alien religion. She shuddered at how well they must have studied our psychology. They must have been watching and learning about our weaknesses for years to understand us so well. But Sam had to get out. She had to warn the world before it was too late. In her mind’s eye she saw the armies of brainwashed worshippers hunting down and destroying the last cells of free-thinking human resistance and, while the human race turned on itself, their alien puppet masters sat on thrones in their magnificent palaces, having their nails done and reading Cosmopolitan.
No. No. Scratch that end bit. They were not really Loosi Beecham, they were evil, disgusting alien monsters who, for some reason best know to their own psychologists, had chosen to invade the Earth disguised as a film star. It was probably something to do with men, she decided. Look at what an idiot Wayne had been making of himself ever since he met Drukk. Not that he didn’t always make an idiot of himself in some way or other but Sam was prepared to bet that, as she’d always suspected, the aliens had worked out that dangling a pair of breasts the size of watermelons under a man’s nose meant you could get him to believe anything.
Look at John, the so-called guru guy, she thought. There he is trying to salvage something of the pathetic fraud he’d been perpetrating on all those idiots out there, his world crumbling down around him, half a dozen armed aliens who could wipe us all out on a whim, and he still can’t keep his eyes from wandering all over their bodies!
“I want you to let us go right now,” Sam burst out, suddenly afraid that all was lost, and that, under the influence of all that cleavage, in a mentally enfeebled state, John was about to become their first convert.
They all looked at her.
“I mean it. I want you to release us. There must be hundreds of armed police out there by now. If you don’t let us go, they’ll come in here after us and you won’t stand a chance, force-fields or no force-fields. Your only hope is to let us go and give yourselves up. Do you understand.”
Braxx sighed. “I fear this human is too unstable. It is a tragedy that their minds are not able to function coherently for more than a few minutes. Would somebody please dispose of her? At this rate, we’ll end up shooting them all.”
The Vinggans all pulled out their weapons and levelled them at Sam, who stared back at them open mouthed and speechless. Fortunately for her, John leapt to his feet.
“Wait! No. I mean stop! Don’t shoot her! I, er, wait... That’s it! I feel a conversion coming over me! Yes, that’s it! An epiphany! I see the light. Oh the Great Spirit has entered my heart. Oh the joy! I want to worship Her. Please Braxx, show me how to worship the Great Spirit.”
Braxx was a little taken aback. He raised a hand to stop his followers shooting anyone for the moment. He stared curiously at John. He’d expected it to take several days of torture before the human, John, would embrace his teachings. That’s how it usually went with Vinggans anyway. But, if this is how it was going to be with humans, he was certainly not going to complain about it! After all, he had some seven billion souls to save and if he had to torture every one of them, it could get a bit tedious. No, this was a much better way. He gave a silent prayer of thanks to She who had made it all possible.
“Of course I will show you, human. It is my Destiny to bring Her teachings to your poor, ignorant planet. But I’m not sure why this means I can’t get rid of this other human. After all, it is quite mad.”
John cast about desperately. “You can’t kill Sam,” he said slowly, stalling, “because... because... Yes! Because she’s seen the light too!”
Sam was outraged. “No I bloody have not!”
John looked her straight in the eye. “Yes you have, Sam.” His piercing, hypnotic gaze caught her like a butterfly on a pin. He stepped up to her and looked deeply into her wide, staring eyes. “You believe the Great Spirit is the One True God. You are overcome with joy at the splendour of this great revelation. You feel you must dedicate your life to worshipping Her and loving Her and knowing Her better. And Braxx and the Vinggans will be your guides, your spiritual masters.” He lowered his eyes and stepped away.
Sam experienced a moment of confusion. Her mind was a blank. For an instant she didn’t know where she was. Then she remembered, Loosi Beecham, the siege, the wonderful revelations about the Great Spirit. She looked across at Braxx and felt a great warmth of affection for the beautiful alien. “Of course,” she said. “I will follow the Great Spirit too! Oh please, guide me, Braxx,” she looked pleadingly at the group of Vinggans who were still aiming their blasters at her. “Please, all of you. I only want to worship Her and love Her and know Her better.”
Braxx blinked and smiled, completely bemused but pleased at the way things were going. “Excellent!” he said. Sam knelt down and kissed the hem of his wedding dress and John quickly followed suit.
Smiling happily at his Vinggan acolytes, Braxx calmly accepted the humans’ obeisances. “Most excellent!” he said. “The Great Work has truly begun.”
-oOo-
Senior Sergeant Rick Fury, despite the name, was a very even tempered man. In fact, Rick was only the second generation of Furies in his family, his father having dumped his long and unpronounceable Greek surname within two months of arriving in Australia. He had always told Rick that he picked the name from the title of a comic that he’d seen in a newsagent's the first day he’d landed in Australia. Now, ever since Rick’s promotion to Sergeant, fifteen years ago, his father couldn’t say hello to him without bursting out laughing. That day, as he watched his father collapse in hysterics, he knew he was in for a hard time. A lot of other people spotted the joke too, so it was lucky that the comic no longer enjoyed its post-war popularity and that, slowly but surely, everyone who had ever read it was dying off. Frankly, there were times when Rick didn’t think this was fast enough.
So it was lucky that Sergeant Fury was an even tempered man, since his ‘technical speciality’ in the police force was arms and armaments.
However, despite a temperament so even you could land a plane on it, at most other times, that night saw him grind his teeth and stomp out of the command-and-control vehicle muttering and cursing under his breath. It was a warm, clear evening and he took several deep breaths of the fresh country air to calm himself down. It was a peaceful night. An orange sliver of moon was lying on its back above the black horizon and the Milky Way was a clear, bright river of stars across the spangled sky. He found the Southern Cross, the only constellation he knew, and let its eternal stillness soothe him.
“Wassup, Sarge?” It was Jacko—Jack Collins—a young constable from his unit.
“You’re supposed to be getting some sleep,” Fury growled.
“Ah look, I tried, Sarge, but sleeping in a car with two other blokes on a hot night like this just isn’t on.”
“It’s the best you’re going to get, lad. They’re sending some tents out tomorrow. I suppose they just forgot about sleeping arrangements in all the excitement.”
The bitterness in his tone was apparent even to the youngster. “You sound like they’ve been giving you a hard time, Sarge,” Jacko said, fishing for something juicy to tell the lads.
“They want us to go in hard in the morning, first thing. Take ’em by surprise.”
The youngster was shocked. Eve
n he could see that lots of innocent people could get hurt that way. Not to mention innocent policemen. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense, Sarge,” he said carefully. “We don’t really have the numbers for a start –”
But the sergeant cut him off. “It’s a load of bollocks that’s what it is, lad. They’re letting themselves be freaked out by the news reports. They want it wrapped up quickly. They see it as a PR nightmare and they want it to go away.” He stared up at the stars. “They’re right in a way. We’ll have more newspaper and TV people out here than policemen by the morning. They’re flying in from all over the bloody place. Forget Channel 9. We’re all going to be on CN-bloody-N tomorrow.”
“We’ve been listening to it on the radio. It’s non-stop on every channel.” Jacko pointed over to the brightly-lit group of media trucks and vans. “You should hear some of the things they’re saying over there. It’s weird. All these chicks with microphones talking about bio-terrorists using killer clones and stolen military laser technology.”
“It’s all a load of bollocks,” Senior Sergeant Fury repeated. “Chief Inspector Sullivan is coming out here to take charge of things herself. The Prime Minister has asked the Premier if he would like the Federal Government to give us any assistance. That means we’re all for the chop if we let those bastards dig in for a long siege.”
They stood together in silence for a long while, each contemplating the dangers ahead of them.
“What do you think it’s all about Sarge?” the young man asked.
The sergeant snorted. “Well it’s not killer clones with ray guns, that’s for sure.” He looked over in the direction of the farmhouse which was more than half a kilometre away, invisible in the solid darkness around them. “It’s just a bunch of loonies. You’ll see. Someone with some stupid grievance who thinks kidnapping a bunch of old folk is going to make a scrap of difference to anything—except the old folk and their families.”
“But what about their weapons, Sarge? Some of the guys from the shoot out said their bullets wouldn’t touch the kidnappers. They said the chicks didn’t have bazookas or rocket launchers, just hand-guns. Yet they took out all those squad cars.”
“That’s just hysteria talking, lad. Someone was firing explosive shells at those cars. Those fellas were just running too fast for cover to see who it was.”
“I never thought I might have to go up against firepower like that, Sarge. I mean, you don’t expect that kind of thing. Maybe we should call the army in, or something?”
“They should have put you in charge, Jacko,” said the sergeant with bitter sarcasm. “You think the same way the top brass do. I’ve already been told that if our little escapade tomorrow morning doesn’t come off they’re going to send in the SAS. In fact, they’re planning their assault in a hangar at Amberley Air Force base, even as we speak.”
Jacko looked hopeful. “So why don’t we just let them get on with it Sarge? Shit! I mean the SAS! Those blokes are good!”
The sergeant smiled ruefully. “Because we’re going to sort it all out before they ever get here, aren’t we? We wouldn’t want the Queensland Police Service looking like we couldn’t handle our own problems, now, would we?”
Jacko was deflated. “No Sarge.”
“That’s right. Now, go on and get some sleep, lad. I want you as fresh as possible for the morning. Briefing at oh five hundred hours remember?”
“Yes Sarge.”
Jacko walked back to the police car where he’d been trying to sleep, feeling a lot worse than when he’d arrived. Senior Sergeant Fury watched him go, wondering how many of his lads would make it safely through the next day.
Chapter 18: The Morning After
In the final minutes before dawn, the police deployed ready for the assault on the farmhouse. Reinforcements had arrived at four o’clock along with the Chief Inspector and a small army of advisers and senior staff. They had set up a big, camouflaged tent with trestle tables, whiteboards and coffee machines and they had finalised their plans as the sky lightened in the East. Many more police officers were engaged elsewhere, manning the roadblocks that held back the trickle of sightseers that had begun yesterday and was building to a flood.
To the sound of pigeons hooting and kookaburras cackling, the police in their body armour had run, crouching low, through the bush to take up their positions around the small cluster of wooden buildings and burnt-out vehicles. Their radios buzzed with call-signs and coded messages as the various units found their way to their designated spots and hunkered down, waiting for the action to begin.
On a small hill which afforded a view of the farmhouse and its surrounds, five different TV networks, eight radio stations and a dozen newspaper reporters watched with telephoto lenses and powerful binoculars as events unfolded. There was a constant babble of commentary already running as earnest men and women murmured into their microphones, reiterating for the hundredth time, the rumours and supposition which was all they had to work with in the absence of any real information. The police had grounded the networks’ helicopters for the time being, so sitting on this hill or creeping through the bush was the best they could do. Creeping through the bush was also prohibited, of course, but one or two newshounds had opted for it all the same, trying not to think about having their hides fried if the killer clones came out shooting.
Shorty and the other kangaroos were completely oblivious of all this covert activity as the rising sun woke them to the usual morning ritual of stretching, yawning and scratching.
“Nice day,” said Fats, trying to get at an itch behind his left ear with an enormous hind leg.
“Yeah, right,” sneered Shorty, which was, everybody knew, just her way.
They started to wander about, eating whatever looked appetising among the sparse vegetation.
“Hey!” Shorty shouted, looking around herself in amazement. “Have you morons already forgotten we’ve got a job to do?”
“I was only getting a bit of breakfast, Boss,” one complained.
“Yeah, what’s the rush? The humans don’t usually start doing stuff for ages yet.”
There was a general hubbub of agreement which Shorty silenced with a thump of her hind legs. “You know, I’ve often thought that when the Sector Police stuck you in those bodies, they left your brains in a jar back at headquarters.” The others chewed slowly and watched her. “So it’s probably right that I remind you that catching a human is without doubt the most important thing that any of us has done in the past three hundred years. So we don’t want to be sitting around here chewing green crap like a bunch of sheep when we could be hanging out by the farm in case one of them comes strolling by, do we?” She looked around at the remarkably sheep-like expressions that surrounded her. “No, we bloody don’t!” she shouted, jumping into the air in frustration. “So get your shaggy arses in gear and lets get moving, you dozy bunch of tossers, before I start using your scrawny hides for target practice!”
Muttering and complaining, the kangaroos began shuffling off in the direction of the farmhouse.
-oOo-
“Wh...? Ugh… Arrh…?”
Detective Sergeant Mike Barraclough struggled to make sense of what was happening. He seemed to be lying in mid-air in the middle of a field with a hideous, black, scaly giant poking him with a thick, taloned finger.
Then it all came back to him.
“It is morning,” the Agent said.
Barraclough squinted at the pinky-grey, pre-dawn sky and groaned. “Almost,” he said and flopped back on his invisible bed.
The Agent poked him again. “We can go to the house now. I am eager to confront the Vinggans.”
Barraclough made a huge effort and roused himself. He felt as though he’d been wearing the same clothes for 36 hours—which he had. He needed a shave and a shower and a month off work. “Yeah, right,” he said, to keep the Agent from poking him again and looked around at the dry and dismal countryside.
To his surprise, a small mob of roos appeared in t
he distance and hopped resolutely towards them. Of course, he thought. They can’t see us.
“One of your local sapient species, I presume,” said the Agent, watching them closely.
Barraclough snorted. “I don’t think you’d call roos sapient if you knew the stupid buggers.”
The Agent kept its attention on the kangaroos as they drew close but all it said was, “Curious.”
“What’s curious?”
“You say that roos are not sapient and yet they are each carrying a weapon.”
The mob was passing close to the Agent’s force bubble now and Barraclough could see that, indeed, each animal had something strapped to its wrist.
“Do you employ non-sapients to use weapons on your behalf?” the Agent wanted to know.
Barraclough had heard of strapping mines to trained dolphins and sending them after enemy ships. He even had a dim memory of people training pigeons to sit in the nose-cones of guided missiles and direct them to their targets. But roos, for Heaven’s sake! Roos with hand-guns? For a moment he felt as if everything he had ever known had been turned on its head. Somehow, he had slipped out of normal reality into an Alice in Wonderland nightmare.
They watched the kangaroos hop past the bubble and on in the direction of the farmhouse, their big tails bobbing behind them. Then the bubble disappeared, as quickly and silently as it had come, and Barraclough felt a light, warm breeze touch his face.
“We should proceed with caution,” the Agent told him, striding off in the direction the kangaroos had taken.
-oOo-
“What the…?”
The policeman turned at the sudden noise behind him to find a small group of kangaroos staring down at him where he lay under the cover of a small bush, watching the farmhouse and waiting for his orders. It was creepy and unnerving the way they all just stood there looking at him. Not normal.
“Hey! Piss off!” he shouted but in a whisper so that he wouldn’t reveal his position. The roos looked at each other but didn’t move. “Shoo! Go on! Clear off!” he hissed.
Cargo Cult Page 18